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Community pulse: Delphi Poll Results

Following your request, in the next week, we’ll have some posts and polls about the cross-platform support in the next Delphi version. But since then, let’s have a look at the results from our last poll(thanks once again for your participation!).

First of all,… at our question ‘What version of Delphi do you use as your main development version?’ the results even if somewhat expected, shown some interesting things (comments after):

Delphi 2007 is still #1 followed closely by Delphi 2009. It seems that Unicode was a very important hurdle. I say was because as you’ll see bellow, there are many of us who will upgrade to Delphi 2010.

69% from you use either Delphi 2007 either Delphi 2009. That’s quite a lot. If we add also 9% of Delphi 2006 and 1% of the braves who use Delphi 2005 (all my respects folks), this means that approx. 80% of us are on the new IDE, Galileo.

“The old guard”, is represented mainly by Delphi 7 with approx. 15%. I think that this is due mainly of Delphi 8 shock, IDE stability issues in the period between D8 (ouch! (again) – I cannot find anyone which use it) and D2005 / D2006, and of course, the Help problem. Both of them in very good shape in Delphi 2010. Ok, perhaps Help still needs improvements (as always), but the IDE is one of the best I’ve seen. Way faster than Visual Studio’s.

So, here we are. Well, what will happen next?

At our question ‘Will you upgrade to RAD Studio 2010?’ the results are as follows: (The ‘Positive Pack’ is pictured in green whereas the ‘Negative answers’ are in tones of red/blue)

Before we start, just a small NOTE: You gave enough answers in ‘Other’ category. I move them, if it made sense, in the predefined ones in order to have a clearer picture. And now some comments:

Overall RAD Studio 2010 is a success. There are already an impressive 41% of you which will upgrade (Software Assurance plays an important role on this – according with your comments). If we’ll add the other 26% which will do, but perhaps latter, we have 67% of you which will upgrade. After this we have 15% which are undecided and want to see more. Here a special mention for a comment in ‘Other’ section:

Undecided – I want to but haven’t managed to convince my boss yet

Hyia son! 🙂 You can show him this blog – perhaps it will help!

The ‘boss & price’ theme is the main reason for not upgrading. An everlasting theme discussed till death over all the battlefields. Just some quick responses:

* someone wrote Unfair prices outside the USA – did you tried to contact the central HQ – sales department?
* someone else wrote unable to afford it – do you know that are different prices for different SKUs?
* another one wrote I will but my boss say Delphi 2006 is good enough – Boy, that’s wrong. If he’d talk about D2009, well, let’s say let it be, even if D2010 is significantly better, but Delphi 2006?? Can you show him this blog (with the reviews in it) please?

Only 3% won’t upgrade because they wait for other features. 64-bit compiling and/or Cross-Platform of course.

But about the future we’ll speak next week. Till then what do you think about the above results?

15 thoughts on “Community pulse: Delphi Poll Results”

“someone else wrote unable to afford it – do you know that are different prices for different SKUs” Prices should be compared to what competitors offers and at what price.
SKUs are the same of 1995, but meanwhile the development world has changed a lot. IMHO it’s a suicide to offer just “local” dbExpress connectivity and a web library limited to 5 (five!) connection in the Pro edition in 2010! I know that ADO can be used instead of dbExpress, but it just mean that less users will use (and report issues about) dbExpress, making it a niche technology.
Embarcadero should face it, in 1995 most small and medium companies were using shared file based databases (dbBase, Paradox, Clipper, FoxPro, Access) while RDBMS servers were used by larger ones – but does it happen still in 2010? No, smaller and cheaper database engines have totally changed the landscape, but someone at BorCodeDero still refuses to accept it. Same for Internet development, five users are good only for a trial or “personal” edition, not a “professional” edition.
The real problem is they nowadays lack real “enterprise” offerings, and all they can offer are some database drivers, a web library written outside, and a multi-tier technology that lacks real enterprise features at a very “expensive” price, compared to competitors. They are no longer leading the pack, thereby they should set prices carefully, and their feature/price ratio is pretty poor – but they blindly keeps on the same 1995 strategy. Worse, in a time of financial issue they decided upgrades from versions earlier than 2006 are possible only within the end of the year (and IMHO whoever bought 2005 should be granted a lifetime upgrade warranty).
I believe many can no longer find Delphi “affordable” at this feature/price ratio – and remember you can’t consider it in isolation, but within its marked – and think about moving to other technologies that would also offer a “safety bag” if looking for another job one day.
After all, it looks it was’t Borland management to make bad choices about Delphi. It is someone within Delphi management. The technical part became better, but the marketing one is still basically flawed, and will bring no good to Delphi, until they change their mindset and try to undertand in what kind of market they are selling and their customers have to survive and be competitive.

The main point is the API which is hidden underneath. For us (users) it doesn’t matter if someone wants to use the embedded designer or not. This is much more an internal problem – to drop the undocked designer – thing which I don’t see to happen any time soon.

“The Upgrade product is available to registered owners of 2006-2009 versions of CodeGear RAD Studio, Borland Developer Studio, Delphi, Delphi Prism or C++Builder Professional or Enterprise products. For a limited time only, through Dec 31, 2009, registered users of all classic versions 1 through 2005 also qualify for upgrade pricing.”

If they wished to push more developers away from Delphi probably they found another good way.

AFAIK electronic downloads too are taxed by UE countries. Companies selling to UE citizens must complain with regulations. That said, it would be much fair if a clear price policy for sales in foreign currencies was set, instead of the $1 = €1 policy used actually, and if that policy would take into consideration exchange variations – but IMHO the”milk the cash cow” attitude was brought from Borland to CodeGear to Embarcadero, despite the damage it’s doing to customers.